Fitness Or Spirituality - Know Which Yoga Style You Need

Traditional yoga styles like Ashtanga, Lyengar and Shivananda are already known to regular practitioners. However, the newer styles like TriYoga or Viniyoga would still confuse many people as to which would serve fitness or spirituality needs. Knowing the various styles and their focus on physical challenge or relaxation would prove helpful.

Hatha Yoga is the 'mother of all' yoga styles since current styles have evolved from this. Simultaneously, it is performed by a combination of the asanas with breathing exercises and cleansing practices (pranayama and shatkriyas) and meditation and deep relaxation. By long practice, the poses are held for long periods under an atmosphere of meditation.

Anusara Yoga highlights an attitude that upholds life and in adjustment to the heart. This style is based on the principle of proper alignment and that a joyful and receptive performance enhance the positive outcomes of the asanas.

Ashtanga-Vinyasa Yoga is a vibrant and strong style with a focus on breathing, that works with six specific sequences of poses and some elements of movement to connect the poses, thereby making a transition between the static traditional positions.

Bikram Yoga is made of a series of 24 positions and two pranayamas or breathing techniques intended to improve strength, balance and flexibility. This style stands out from the rest with its venue of a room that's heated up to 40 degrees Celsius, to cause more sweat for flushing out body toxins. Which came up with 'Hot Yoga' as the more popular term for this style.

Integral Yoga, from its term, integrates the asanas, breathing styles, meditation and deep relaxation into one complete procedure with a spiritual bent.

Popularized for its wide use of props of chairs, belts, blocks, etc. is Iyengar Yoga, which puts so much attention on particularities and focus on correct alignment. Newcomers are instructed in detail and also provided with basic information as to its health benefits.

Jivamukti Yoga comes from the Sanskrit definition of jivamukti, "liberation of the soul." This style has a spiritual inclination and is more traditional than others and is performed in particular progressions of asanas that are held for a long time, going on segue from one to the next in an energetic and flowing manner. Vegetarianism and awareness of the environment are promoted attitudes.

Kripalu Yoga, or its alternative term, Amrit Yoga is a mutually healing and mystical style. A gentle practice, its goal is to calm the mind and develop an attitude of open acceptance of the self and one's performance.

On the contrary, Kundalini Yoga is energetic and strong, aiming to stir the force of the serpent Kundalini, found at the base of the spinal column. This style also holds the asanas for long periods and emphasizes breathing techniques.

Power Yoga is a easy, dynamic and precise offshoot of Ashtanga style. The aim of this style is to increase staying power, energy and good health. It's said to be 'about feeling good, not just looking good.'

Sivananda Yoga integrates the tenets of exercise (asana), breathing (pranayama), relaxation (savasana), vegetarian diet and meditation.

TriYoga is a mixture of asanas, pranayama and mudras (sacred hand gestures) with fluid segues of strings of asanas.

Viniyoga is among the curative styles, centered on synching breathing and movements. Asanas are held for long periods too, but these are adapted to the practitioner's age and health condition.

Vinyasa Flow style is made of instant asanas which progress from one to the next in certain easy movements harmonized with breathing techniques. These 'flows' are designed for better vitality and flexibility, putting the mind at rest and creating spiritual awareness and healing. This style is an adaptation from the traditional Ashtanga-Vinyasa yoga styles.

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Which Way to Go - Right Or Left?

Sixty long years have passed. The state of the common man has not registered any perceptible changed the same kind of roof that can protect him neither from the sun nor from the rain, the same in sanitary conditions all around drink and the most depressing factor not much work to do, work enough to keep him and his family warm both inside and outside.

This is the plight of over 80% of our countrymen today. They wait for a better sunny morning to dawn, but the morning eludes them. The journey into the long night continues. But the future did not look so bleak in 1947. Blaming the foreigner for our ills we waited for out midnight freedom that would mark the end of all our ills. Like the flag that soared high, the hoped of the people too soared high up into the skies.

As a nation that saw God in every man, a nation that has accepted the undaunted spirit of man a nation which in spite of its bias towards anarchy encouraged the free play of the human mind in every activity, we would never reconcile to any thing short of democracy, but it is not the democracy the west offered, but it is a democracy with a touch of Indian ness. A thousand years of foreign rule has impoverished the nation. It had to face wave after wave of the most savage us invasion whose only aim was to plunder and slaughter, invasions of well developed militant nations who wanted to annex the land, invasions by hostile cultures that were out to destroy the faith of the native people, loot and carry off the wealth of the land and finally by nations who wanted to remain here and rule. But they never could accept this as their land and identify themselves with the people here. They too wanted to get rich and go back with bulging bags. They did not feel they had any obligations here but felt that their loyalties were elsewhere. If some of them settled down here they could never forget they were the rulers of the land. And so the people lived, humiliated and insulted, terrorized and tyrannized; impoverished and insecure. It was the spirituality "which has always maintained itself even in these days of declining vitality that has saved India from destruction. Any other nation under the same pressure would have long ago perished body and soul". We are alive today body and soul intact. But the marks those pressures have left are indelible. We are now the poorest of the poor nations.

To banish poverty Marxism would be the surest way. But it means the ringing of a death knell to what India has stood for ages - freedom of a death knell to what India has stood for ages - freedom of man's choice of action. It is true that certain classes of people are denied of certain aspects of social life. Yet they have liberty to pursue what they desire in their limited sphere of action, their individual freedom was never in jeopardy. And when we have already accepted that it was wrong to subject people to discrimination, raising our voice in resentment, to usher it in a new from will be doubly undesirable. The Jainism, Buddhism, Vaishnavism are all attempts in this direction which proclaim the equality of all men. A nation that has chosen Ashoka's Dharma Chakra as its emblem can never go for Marxism which casts a slur on man's dignity. Besides, Marxism has a fundamental defect: it declares that the end justifies the means and so subjects the labor to indignities and to concentration camps while it maintains that its goal is a classless society which in its ultimate state needs no government at all. If forgets that the human mind loves freedom and the more you deny it the more it covets. Excessive attempts to suppress will lead to discontent and revolt. The process of disintegration that has set in the U.S.S.R. the upheaval in the Communist China ( no doubt these are recent developments, though their symptoms were visible long long ago ) are facts that speak for themselves.

A society which has professed and practiced caste system that believes in the inborn inequalities of men should naturally vote for capitalism. In the caste based society it is the upper classes that ruled and in the capitalism, it is again the upper classes that ruled and in the capitalism, it is again the upper class that rules. The difference is in nomenclature and in the process of acquisition, while the former is acquired by birth, the second by ascent. In fact the similarities are more than that meets the eye. If the son of a Brahmin, is not the son of millionaire, a millionaire again? At any rate both thrive on exploitation. But we have voted against capitalism.

The result is we did not like to walk neither on the right nor on the left. We do not want to become either communists or capitalists. Our path lies between the two and we call it democratic socialism.

As a matter of fact there is no really Capitalist Society nor a completely Communist society anywhere in the world now. In the so called capitalist countries, the capitalists do not have absolute freedom; government curbs are there. Trade Unionism acts as a check at every stage. Insurance and Gratuity schemes, medical and educational facilities, bonuses which are all compulsory, cater to the needs of the weaker section, diluting the dose of capitalism. In a communist society, there are no personal or private holdings. But who can eliminate administrative difference? Communist or non communist, a factory should have a force man and the status of the foreman and a common worker cannot be the same. Russia has now accepted the right to property.

So our path which lies between the two, strikes a balanced between them, retaining the best of both, the freedom and dignity of man that capitalism allows, and the economic progress the Communism envisages; our aim is to eradicate poverty, create employment and remove all the social ills. What does it matter which 'ism' we call it by. We want progress in every walk of life without curbing the freedom of our people. And so our constitution guarantees this sacred right. There is again the right to property. Anybody can earn, bequeath or squander; 'buy or sell' pursuer any avocation he or she likes, practice any religion dear to one's heart, discard if he does not like and embrace another he pleases; all doors of progress are open to him. Anyone above 21 (now 18) can send his own representative to the Assembly and Parliament or make him a CM or PM or if he so desires become one himself ig he is above 35. If any one wants to further one's studies abroad, one can do so and after completing the course of his choice, he need not come back if that country appears more alluring. What a fine charter of freedom!

But what a world of difference between practice and precept, real and ideal! To get a seat in an LKG class that one has to pay hundreds of rupees as donation; that jobs are available for sale in the open marker, that nothing can be for done without palm greasing; that we have to stand in winding queues for hours to draw our scant rations and that millions of our people groan with hunger, disease and diet!

People are getting desperate when values vanish and corruption becomes the national trait unrest will be the order, and violence the cult of the day.

Should we turn to the right or left? We do not yet know. But one thing is certain. We cannot cat the cake and yet have it.

Sam J Thomas is a freelance writer and has written content for several web & print media projects. He is currently preparing content for Kerala House Boat Package -based tourism website and http://www.solvedquestionpapers.com.

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